Everything Stays
by LeonaWriter
Summary: Leia still remembered some of the songs that her mother had shared with her as a child, and when she grows up, they stay with her.


Leia sang.

It wasn't common knowledge. Most of the songs she knew weren't fit for large audiences, and nor were they suitable, in her opinion, for use as material for a holoreporter to ask for.

She had listened when her mother had sung her to sleep, and when she no longer had a mother, she would keep the songs close to her heart, and when she was alone and in need of feeling like she wasn't, when she needed sleep but it simply would not come in the face of all she was facing, she would sing to herself and the night.

She had listened when hurt and injured and crying, to the soothing sounds her mother had made, hums that turned into songs of their own, not always making sense but always helping. So when the lists came in of the dead and the wounded, she found herself humming, nonsense music often without any words. Those around her would feel sorrows not lifted, but shared - but they never spoke of it, as though it were the kind of spell that would shatter the moment it was made real.

When her son arrived, she found that the music had not been lost at the revelation of who her birth parents had truly been. Instead, she would sing to him lullabies of stars and warm light and comforting arms and how they would always, always love him.

...

Leia was older now, and the music had stuttered almost into silence more than once by now.

Voices that had joined her in love and joy had disappeared, one by one. New voices came, uncertain and unready and unknowing of the words or how the songs should be sung. But nothing could ever replace what had been lost.

Now, it was the wind that was singing. They found themselves in a sanctuary of a world, full of green and blue, the First Order hiding in a far corner of the galaxy to lick their wounds and rage at their losses.

The Resistance should be singing victory songs. Some even were. Leia knew better - she knew that with every battle, regardless whether it was counted as a win or a lose, they lost men, fighters, droids. Planets that were safe would now be known. And the side that most could only avoid looking at - the Stormtroopers that died left their mark in the force in their leaving just as much as their own fighters, and as Finn demonstrated - and was not even the first or last to - not all of them had chosen that path.

So like and unlike how her son had chosen his.

Her son, currently held in the medcenter, the wounds he had suffered this last fight were superficial, yet those were not the ones that had caused him to have a scar across his face that made Rey hesitate when the matter was brought up, and nor were they the ones that made him sleep for so long.

She sighed, and followed her feet.

...

He woke to a voice, carried on the wind.

He might have thought that it was the wind, but air smelled new and the voice was familiar, telling of love and safety and deep, deep sadness.

Eyes that had started to open drifted shut again, pretending that none of the past fifteen-odd years had taken place, that his face didn't still ache when the weather was cold, and that he couldn't sense that he was, somehow, being watched.

He shivered, turning over onto his side for a little warmth, although he stilled as the song drew to a close, one last haunting note drifting on the air.

A new song started, and it called to him.

"Let's go in the garden..."

His eyes slowly opened again. He hadn't heard this before, it was new, and he could tell with even just this much.

"You'll find something waiting right there where you left it."

The force itself was hanging on a thread, waiting, expecting, and under surveillance or not, he had to answer the call.

"Lying upside down."

He found his feet unsteadily, wincing as he realised they were bare and the floor, without a carpet, was cold. He resisted the urge to arm himself, knowing that if he was seen with anything that could be used as a weapon, it would only be used against him, knowing that he had all the defence he needed in the force itself, knowing that if he had anything else, he might react reflexively, attack a non-existant threat, lose something important.

"When you finally find it..."

Her voice cracked on the words, and he hesitated, unsure, only the force itself keeping him from sitting himself back down and pretending that none of this had happened. Things would go easier for him if he didn't move. They had even told him that.

Yet he had a feeling that the song was for him, and that he was meant to hear it.

"You'll see how it's faded-"

Another falter, and he paused at the door, not knowing if he could face the emotions and bear the weight of them yet.

Too soon, his heart was saying with the way it beat so hard in his chest. Too soon. It'll kill you.

"The underside is lighter when you turn it around."

His feet were moving without him, now, and the cold of the medcenter floor gave way to the grasses and small flowers of a world he'd never been on before, as far as he knew. Although in the past fifteen years, when would he have had the time to pay attention to horticulture?

"Everything stays, right where you left it."

She knew he was there. She knew. But then again, she had always known. Every scraped knee, every confusion, every conflict in his head.

"Everything stays, but it still changes..."

He stumbled, eyes stinging and body still weak, couldn't catch himself in time to stop himself from falling. Not completely.

"Ever so slightly-"

He heard her move. Heard, because he could not lift his head. If he shifted, if he rose or looked about the place, then things would change.

"Daily and nightly," came the next words, sung softly like whispers into his ear as her arms snuck around him.

He hadn't felt this in - Force, too long. And there was still something missing, something that he had taken away. Something that could never be replaced.

"In little ways..."

The words were less sung and more spoken wetly into his shoulder as he, hesitatingly, began to reciprocate, to hold her back - at first limply, worried that she would shy away knowing what his hands had done, and then fiercely all at once, not wanting to let go a second time.

"As everything stays."

They could stay like this. Let the world go on around them. Stars could live and die. Names could be given and taken away again with a word. But the songs would remain, and now, when he was tired and all he had done weighed heavy on his shoulders and he could not sleep, and when the pain grew too much, he could hear her singing within him again.

...

AN: I thought this up while I was out, and at first I thought I'd draw for it, but although I love drawing, I'm not actually that good of an artist, and it takes ages for anything to come out. So I wrote instead.

If you're curious, the timeframe this is set in is at least several years after The Force Awakens, theoretically in a mid-point after the second movie, with character development leading up to all of this. I'm just a sucker for redemption stories, and I haven't seen much fic of this sort of thing yet.

The song referenced here was 'Everything Stays' by Rebecca Sugar, as seen in Adventure Time. I love the song, and I thought it was perfect for these two.

I hope you enjoyed!


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